


No Need To Say Goodbye

by cecilantro



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Other, but they're all there - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-14
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2019-08-01 18:14:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16289420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cecilantro/pseuds/cecilantro
Summary: Caleb dies.He leaves behind his family, but he takes a very important message with him to the afterlife.To Molly.





	No Need To Say Goodbye

**Author's Note:**

> please tell me if you cried bc i require this knowledge THANKS.

“Caleb!” Nott screams his name as he goes down and the world is already spinning above him in a way it hasn’t before. It hits him, then, that he is about to die.

 

Nott is at his side.

 

“Ah- wh- wh- where is- the one with the sword-?”

 

There’s a terrible crack to one side.

 

“Ah.” He says, “Beau got him.”

“You’re fuckin’ right I did.” Beau hits her knees on the opposite side of Caleb’s head to Nott, eyes wide and worried, “Jester’s on her way, Caleb. Hold on.”

“I’m holding.” Caleb lies, smiling, eyes half-lidded in his mortal exhaustion.

“Caleb-” Nott panics, running her hands over his shoulder and down to his chest and torso, where the huge curve of a slice is busy turning his insides into outsides, but he feels no pain, “- Caleb don’t close your eyes.”

“But I’m tired.” it sounds like a whine, and this is all- it’s so funny. It was such a simple encounter. They won. They’re okay. The only other one hurt was Clay, but Caleb had seen him go down and Jester was right there. And now she’s right here.

  
“Jester, heal him!” Caleb hears, and Jester puts her hands to her face and breathes into her palms.

  
“I can’t.” She chokes, “I- I used my last spell on Clay, I’m tapped-”

“Then wake him up! Get him here!”  
  
“He died, Beau, he won’t wake up for ages, I had to use the diamonds!” Jester is tearing up and she crouches by Caleb’s chest, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Caleb.”

“It is okay.” Caleb assures, and offers her his hand, “Nott… Beauregard… I have things that I- I should have done. And I will not get the chance. Trent…”

“We’ll sort Trent. Beau promises with fire in her voice and Caleb smiles, smiles wider when Fjord and Yasha come with Clay strung between them like a chain of lanterns.

“Then it will be okay. There is nothing you can do. My friends.” He looks from face to face to face and stops on Nott. Her eyes are wide and full of tears and disbelief. “My family.”

  
“Don’t leave me.” Nott chokes, with tears streaming down her cheeks, “You can’t leave me.”

  
“I do not have a choice.” Caleb smiles, “And neither do you.”

“Caleb?” Yasha says, and her voice is so quiet, has been so quiet always, but he loves her. He loves them all. He loves his family.

“ _Ja?_ ”

“Say hi to Molly for me?” She asks, and he can hear her voice breaking like glass over the words, “Tell them that I love them?”

 

He doesn’t have the energy for words any more. But he smiles, fractionally wider over the quickly graying scene, over Yasha’s tearful eyes, and he dies with the shape of the word _promise_ on his lips. 

 

“Caleb?” Nott chokes, and her hand flies to his wrist, begging for a pulse. Beau pushes two fingers to the soft part of his throat, where she knows his heartbeat should be.

 

Should be.

 

_Should be._

 

“Caleb.” is all she can manage. She doesn’t break like Nott does, like Jester does, she doesn’t shatter to pieces with a cheek pressed to Caleb’s bloodied chest or in a little blue ball but she feels tears spring and burn in her eyes as she takes his hand and pulls Jester into a one-armed hug and Yasha-

 

Yasha drops Clay and looks at her hands.

 

“I can heal.” She says in a horrified sense of wonder, and Fjord looks at her with tear-rimmed eyes,

“What?”

“I could have saved him. I could have stabilised him. Just long enough, maybe, I could- I could have stopped him dying. I- I didn’t-” she looks up at him with wide eyes. There are no tears rolling down her cheeks, now, her hair whips with a wind that isn’t there and the blue and the violet are fading, flickering to black, “I could- I lost another friend, because I- I didn’t think, I wasn’t there, I wasn’t _enough._ ”

 

Nott hears and does not comprehend and she does not blame. She clings to Caleb’s lifeless chest with her copper wire in her hand,

“Come back.” She chokes into it, “Caleb, come back. Caleb, please reply to this message.”

 

 

Caleb sees all of this from a place somewhere above his body, watching them in mute anguish. At least, he thinks it’s anguish. He thinks he would hurt for his friends, if he could hurt at all.

Someone, a figure, dark in the milky-pale way of the new world he stands in, they appear from a sudden tear in reality.

“This way.” They tell him, and their voice is the kind of soft that comes with unquestionable authority. Their hair is dark over their raven-feather cloak and they watch him with eyes so keen that they could belong to Nott.

He wants to say goodbye to his friends. To his family. But no words will come from his mouth.

“They’ll be alright.” His guide answers his unasked question, “But you need to come with me now. There’s someone just on the other side waiting for you, and past that, your parents, too. Deeper, but there.”

_His parents._

Gods, he hopes he hasn’t disappointed them. He hopes that he’s managed to repair the things that he’s done.

“They’re proud of you.” his guide assures as Caleb begins to make his way to them, and he casts one last look over his shoulder at his little, broken family. At Yasha, shrouded in darkness.

“I have a message to pass on.” He speaks, and his voice sounds strong. His guide nods.

“I know you do.”

They step through the void and leave the Nein, and life, behind.

 

The afterlife seems different to what Caleb had expected. Sort of like an infinite, pastel-dark void full of stars and clouds, much like the inside of the dodecahedron. His guide melts into the depths, and Caleb is alone, standing in the middle of nothing and everything at once. The rip in reality behind him has closed.

And then he hears it.

“Caleb?” A shocked, but familiar voice, and Caleb looks straight to its source.

 

Mollymauk Tealeaf.

 

Charging across the void toward him, Mollymauk Tealeaf, dressed as they always had in their ruffled shirt and patterned pants and high boots and Caleb doesn’t know when he started running, but he collides with Molly at incredible speed and they’re laughing. They’re crying, too, their arms around him and spinning, and Caleb has his arms around their shoulders and his face pressed to their neck with bits of their hair between his mouth and their skin but he kisses as best he can anyway.

“Caleb, oh my Gods,” Molly chokes as they stop spinning and only cling closer, “I’ve missed you. I’ve missed you all so much, I’ve been watching, I’m so _sorry._ ”

“It’s alright.” Caleb sobs against their throat, “I- I missed you, too.”

“I didn’t want to tell you, when I was alive,” Molly burrows their face against Caleb’s hair, “You weren’t ready and I didn’t want to tell you. But- but I love you. Caleb, I love you, I’ve _missed you_.”

 

They fall into a silence broken only by sobs and gasps as they try to pull air that they don’t need past the lumps in their throats. And they cling, and they cling, and their arms and shoulders never tire, never hurt, they will never do so again because they’re dead. But they’re dead in one another’s arms.

 

“I love you too.” Caleb says hoarsely, after what feels like hours of quiet in the void of space, “And- oh-” he draws back to meet Molly’s eyes and it’s so wonderful, _so wonderful_ to see their face after all this time, he finds his hand on their cheek without thinking.

“Yasha asked me to say hi.” Caleb tells Molly, “She wanted me to tell you she loves you.”

  
Molly swallows on a fresh wave of tears.

  
“I know she does.” their voice is choked, “We’ll see them soon enough.”

“Not too soon, I hope.” Caleb brushes his thumb to Molly’s cheek, smudging the tears, “I’m not a fan of waiting, but I can wait for that.”

“You get used to waiting, here.” Molly smiles, a watery thing, but real, “Would you like to know what I’ve been waiting for for three years?”

“What?”

“This.”

 

And Molly kisses him.

 

Damn anyone that has ever said that you lose the ability to feel when you’re dead. Caleb feels his heart explode in his chest and he clings to them and kisses them back fiercely.  
It lasts almost forever. And when they draw apart, Molly takes a shuddering breath and rests their forehead to Caleb’s.

“We’re safe here.” They whisper, “We’re okay here. I can love you here.”

“I can love you too.” Caleb kisses them again, brief and sweet. Molly gives a soft breath of laughter.

“Can I meet the parents?”

“You can.” Caleb says, and he does not feel afraid.


End file.
